he toolmaker, romped and raced in the ankle-deep dust like a boy.

Sunrise always found the floating population of Comanche setting
breakfastward in a clamoring tide. After that, when the land-office
opened at nine o'clock, the stream turned toward it, the crowd grew
around it, fringing off into the great, empty flat in which it stood--a
stretch of naked land so white and gleaming under the sun that it made
the eyes ache. There the land-seekers and thrill-hunters kicked up the
dust, and got their thousands of clerkly necks burned red, and their
thousands of indoor noses peeled, while they discussed the chances of
disposing of the high numbers for enough to pay them for the expense of
the trip.

After noonday the throngs sought the hydrant and the shade of the
saloons, and, where finances would permit, the solace of bottled beer.
And all day over Comanche the heel-ground dust rose as from the
trampling of ten thousand hoofs, and through its tent-set streets the
numbers of a strong army passed and repassed, gazing upon its gaudy
lures. They had come there to gamble in a big, free lottery, where the
only stake was the time spent and the money expended in coming, in which
the grand prize was Claim Number One.

"It looks to me," said Horace Bentley, the bald lawyer, "like a great
many people are going to be bitterly disappointed in this game. More
than forty thousand have registered already, and there are three days
more before the books close. The government circulars describing the
land say there are eight thousand homesteads, all told--six hundred of
them suitable for agriculture once they are brought under irrigation,
the rest grazing and mineral land. It seems to me that, as far as our
expectations go in that direction, we might as well pack up and go
home."

Four days in camp had made old-timers out of the company gathered under
the awning before their tent, waiting for the meal which Mrs. Reed and
her assistants were even then spreading on the trestle-built table.
There had been a shower that afternoon, one of those gusty, blustery,
desert demonstrations which had wrenched the tents and torn hundreds of
them from their slack anchoring in the loose soil.

After the storm, with its splash of big drops and charge of blinding
dust, a cool serenity had fallen over the land. The milk had been washed
out of the distances, and in the far southwest snowy peaks gleamed
solemnly in the setting sun, the barrier on the utterm